


A Life Worth Living

by SusieBeeca



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Conjoined Twins, Executioners - Freeform, Gen, Homeworld is Horrible, Mention of Death, Off-Colors, Pre-Canon, Speculation, Synesthesia, illustrated fanfic, on the lam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 17:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16791424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SusieBeeca/pseuds/SusieBeeca
Summary: After finding what she hopes is a safe place to hide, Rhodonite scouts the area in search of any weak points. She stumbles upon something the likes of which she's never seen before, and comes face-to-face with what it means to stay alive.





	A Life Worth Living

The columns loomed above her in dreary monotony as Rhodonite made her first trek around the Kindergarten’s unexplored depths. Though her eyes kept skittering back and forth, she’d occasionally spare a glance upwards; she’d always felt big and bulky, but the countless exit holes reminded her of just how small she really was. She tried not to linger on the thought of how many lives had started here, how many of them might have already been snuffed out… how many lives led and ended as hollow and empty as the silt they came from.

_Snap out of it! Brooding isn’t going to help._

But she couldn’t keep herself from briefly touching every hole within reach as she marched forward. It was her little way of acknowledging the nameless.

Half a mile or so into her expedition, something caught her eye. She paused, frowning, when she came upon a hole near the ground that seemed to have broken irregularly. Gingerly she touched the edges, tracing her fingers over the jagged rock that split halfway between two head-shaped openings, leading to one base. It must’ve been on a fault line. What other explanation could there be? She was no Peridot, but even she could tell this was a relatively new one---a decade old or less. Maybe even a year. Rhodonite rubbed the dust between her fingers as she mused. Padparadscha was still in the early stages of her infection, but she might be able to see what had happened here if she focused.

Her belly tightened. _Padparadscha._ She felt guilty for leaving her behind with that new fusion, but she knew it was far too dangerous to take the fragile Sapphire into uncharted territory. Long ago Rhodonite had made up her mind---if someone had to fall to protect the Off-Colours, it would be her and her alone.

Something rustled.

Her head whipped around, teeth grating together. The air was thick and pinging with tension. Then… after an interval of yawning stillness, she heard a noise so soft and muffled that it barely broke through the misty air. The knot of anxiety was clenching under her gems, but she willed herself rigid. There was a chance it was Padparadscha coming to check up on her, but she couldn’t let her guard down, not now, not ever.

Top eyes scanned left as bottom eyes scanned right. All she could see, for miles upon miles, were the crumbling towers of drained rock. No Padparadscha in sight, but no robonoids either. Though her shoulders slumped a bit, she kept her senses on high alert, just in case---

She heard it again.

A shiver crackled up her scalp, but Rhodonite didn’t tense her legs to run---whatever that was, it sounded different from the buzzing of the robonoids. If she didn’t know better, she’d say it had sounded like pebbles jostling under a nervous foot. Stock-still, she listened.

Eventually the sound came again, and a few flecks of shale fell from the ledge above her. This time it was followed by a gasp, and Rhodonite glanced up just in time to see a bare foot dart out of her line of sight.

The shriek of surprise came out before she could stop herself, and the other gem responded in kind. Rhodonite stared at the ledge, dumbstruck, listening to the scrambling and frantic running, their screams echoing from column to column.

Part of her wanted to call out _“Wait!”_ but she was too stunned to even think; it took an agonizingly long stretch of time for her thoughts to kick back into gear, and when it did, it was all gummy with reticence. Chewing her lip, she stared up at the ledge, trying to find the words to express what was bubbling up under her fear.

White. This emotion was flashing white. It was a colour she hadn’t felt for a long time.

Her slimmer hands rubbed her thick wrists as she twisted her fingers together, weighing her options. There was a chance that this was a trap. Someone could be trying to draw her out. Someone could be planning on using her as bait to---she shuddered---to capture Padparadscha. That bounty on her head must be mighty tempting.

But… there was a chance someone was in need of help.

Squaring her shoulders, Rhodonite balled her hands into fists and forced herself forward. It was a risk she knew she had to take.

 _If it is a trap, she’s lost the element of surprise,_ she reassured herself. _I’ve got the training of a Ruby and the agility of a Pearl. She won’t even see it coming. I’ve got nothing to fear._

But her natural pessimism made her repress a groan. _Oh, honestly. Who do you think you’re fooling?_

She carefully walked the twisting incline, one hand trailing along the curve of the wall to steady her shivering form. Thoughts banged around in her skull--- _Are you insane? What are you doing? You’re going to get us shattered!_ \---but the strange fluttering in her chest kept them from anchoring her down. Once she’d wound her way up to the top of the ledge she gave the area a quick scan; the fine layer of dust on the ground had been recently disturbed, and if she squinted she could make out faint footprints. They started on tiptoe, but turned to fast shuffling as they led to the exit hole at the very back of the Upsilon segment. It was a dead end, but she wasn’t sure if her new ‘guest’ knew that.

_Showtime._

She gulped, and moved so that her shadow fell in front of the hole. “H-hello?”

There came a startled silence, a silence too telling.

One of the benefits of being a fusion was the synesthesia; while hearing colours was occasionally annoying, her ability to taste sounds had proved invaluable in her survival. The robonoids’ murderous growl always left her gagging, but now… she’d heard the scrabbling and tasted a spicy tingle. The scream of fear was salty and raw. The nearly-noiseless gasp was bitter in her mouth, and, on some horrendously primal level, she realized she was going to be dealing with a gem whose terror was far beyond her own.

“Hello?” she said again, this time trying to mollify her voice.

Her guest choked on her whimper, just a little too late to hold it in. It tasted of hot, acrid bile.

“I don’t have a weapon.” It was a fib. When that didn’t get a response, Rhodonite took to a knee and held all her hands out, showing they were empty and far from her gems. “I can’t hurt you,” she ventured. “I… um… wouldn’t hurt you, even if I could.”

Whoever was in the cave had frozen in place. Realizing she was at somewhat of a standstill, Rhodonite shifted her stance. “Do you need help?”

And finally, a tiny voice: “Please go away.”

She balked. “I just…”

“ _Leave us alone!_ ”

Rhodonite pulled her hand back a few inches and glanced down to the single set of footprints. _‘Us’?_ “Um… how many of you are there?”

The sob was heartbreaking.

Sitting back on her heels, Rhodonite folded her hands across her lap and waited. Now that her emotions had dipped from the crescendo of fright into the familiar dull hum of anxiety, she could feel Pearl’s well-trained patience gently rise above Ruby’s impetuousness. “I’m here to help,” she said quietly. “I’m not going to drag you out, and I’m not going to hurt you.” After reflecting a moment, she added “I’m not going to judge you, either.”

Then she actually laughed. “How could I? I mean, look at me!” Her smile, joyless as it was, dimmed to a little slit as that sunk in. “Or… don’t. I’ve made a few gems faint, and not in the good way. Heh…” She ran a hand through her hair and toyed the wiry end of a curl between her knuckles. “Is that why you’re hiding in there? Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes. _No._ You’ll be afraid of us. _We’ll scare you._ ”

The up-and-down lilt of the voice was odd, but given the circumstances, it was the least worrisome thing she had to deal with. Crossing her fingers behind her back, Rhodonite said, somehow without stammering, “I don’t scare easily.”

The hush lingered for a moment. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. _Besides, you’re lying._ ”

She raised an eyebrow. No, her ears weren’t playing tricks on her---that time she swore she heard two voices. “How did you know I was lying?”

“We didn’t. _But we do now._ ”

Rhodonite grinned despite her blush and started picking at her gloves. “Hmph. Well played.”

“You… you might mean well,” came the whisper, “But you can’t help us. _And why would you want to?_ ”

Closing her eyes, Rhodonite shifted around until she was sitting with her legs folded under her, toes touching. “That’s a very good question.” It would be hard to put into words something that she’d only ever felt as a nebulous flame inside her, but she had to try. Opening her eyes, she smoothed out her hair and began, trying not to falter:

“You see, someone saved my life once,” she murmured as she gazed at the little cavern. “I didn’t even know it was worth saving. I didn’t know it was worth _anything…_ ” She let out a heavy sigh. “Look, I’m an abomination, there’s no two ways around it, but someone saw some value in me, even if no one else did. Not even me.” Tapping her toes against the ground, she cleared her throat and kept trying to fill the silence. “It might not make sense, but, um, I didn’t want to be… ungrateful? Is that the right word? I don’t know, but… Why waste a life that’s been saved? I figured the least I could do was put my life to good use. I want to help other Off-Colours whenever I can.”

The speech had sounded much better in her head, and she wasn’t quite sure how it had come out all broken and jumbled. Another flush heated her cheeks and she almost apologized, but then she heard a whisper from inside the hole. It tasted tangy and soft.

“What are ‘Off-Colours’?”

“You haven’t heard that term before? You must be new!” Her belly lurched when she realized she now had the dubious honour of breaking it to them. “Um… it means gems who aren’t right. Flawed. Either by infection, or by choice, like me.” Looking down at her hands, she mumbled “Or by accident of creation, I suppose, but I’ve never seen one like that. As soon as they emerge wrong, those damn Rutiles run them down and drag them to the chipper.” A shudder wracked her spine. “Ugh. How _awful._ ”

An eerie stillness settled over the ledge. It dragged on so long it started to pluck at Rhodonite’s nerves, but just as she was about to blurt something out, her guests spoke again.

“’Off-Colour’,” one voice mumbled, and the other finished with a subdued “Well… we certainly fit the bill.”

Rhodonite decided this was the time for cajoling. “Let me be the judge of that.”

“Oh really? I thought you said you _weren’t_ going to judge.”

She opened and closed her mouth, unsure of what to say. Had she heard a trace of a smile in those words?

“Ignore her. She’s just teasing you.” After a deep breath: “Please stand back. We’re going to come out.”

A spindly hand edged out of the hole and clutched at the edge, and after a few tense seconds, she poked her head out. Rhodonite had to bite down on the inside of her lip to keep from yelping. Oh no. How could she have been so stupid?! It _was_ a trap after all! Her stupid, _stupid_ desire to make her life worth living had just led to its end.

She was face-to-face with a Rutile.

“Don’t worry,” she said quickly, misinterpreting Rhodonite’s aghast expression. “You didn’t offend us.”

“Speak for yourself!” snapped the other voice.

She rolled her eyes and gave Rhodonite a rueful grin. “As I said earlier, ignore her.”

Too frozen to move her limbs, Rhodonite’s shaky gaze flicked over the Rutile’s form, and a bit of her tension ebbed when she saw the poor thing was missing her left arm. Off-Colour, indeed.

Looking over her useless shoulder, the Rutile said, not unkindly, “Are you coming, or do I have to drag you?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” the other voice grumbled.

Another foot poked out, another hand, another… and, just like that, the horror Rhodonite had been fighting off crashed right back down on her.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. From the waist up, two bodies… and from the waist down, only one. And smack-dab in the middle, a grossly deformed gem. She had to blink her eyes clear, but the image was still there.

The two heads looked at each other, each a mirror image of the other’s defeated shame. “We tried to warn you,” the right one said.

The left one swallowed. “We understand if you feel the need to…”

“…End us,” the other finished, her throat tight.

Rhodonite’s world wobbled, and it took her a few clicks before she realized that she’d risen to her feet without conscious decision. So many words, emotions, fragments of thoughts were whirling in her head like a hurricane, and she couldn’t find a single one she could articulate. Instead, she reached out one of her tinier hands.

The Rutile flinched, the left head gasping in fear, but all Rhodonite did was place the tips of her gloved fingers on the place where the right one’s left arm should have been. Even through the fabric, she could feel the quivering. With harrowing slowness, she traced her hand down from the aborted shoulder, over the edge of the sullied uniform, then along skinny ribs. Her palm came to rest on the crevice between them, on that impossible place where they were bound together.

They were shaking even more than she was.

All Rhodonite could bumble out was “You… you’re… you’re _real_.”

“Of course we are,” Left said, her voice curt and thin, eyeing Rhodonite’s hand. “Did you think you were hallucinating?”

“Don’t be rude,” Right reprimanded.

Rhodonite withdrew her hand. To her shock, she realized that she wasn’t talking to a two-headed creature--- this was two separate entities. Neither she nor anyone on Homeworld had ever heard of one gem forming two consciousnesses.

“One in a million,” she said aloud, and then started to laugh. “Two in a million!”

They took a couple of suspicious steps back---and then a few more when Rhodonite’s laugh kicked up a notch.

“I can’t believe it! How do you even walk?”

Left blushed, and Right thinned her lips. “One foot in front of the other, just like everyone else. How do _you_ walk?”

Shaking her head, Rhodonite again lifted her hands in that peaceable gesture, but didn’t try to close the space between them. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she mumbled, looking both of them in the eye at once. “I’m just…” Her chin dipped almost to her collarbone, and her wide grin faded down to an abashed half-smile. “I’m sorry. I laugh when I’m nervous.”

It was hard to keep from laughing as she watched them, out of sync with each other, trying to decide which set of her eyes they should be meeting. Eventually Left settled for the bottom, Right for the top. “Who are you?” Right asked.

Left clarified: “Do you have a name?”

“Oh! Oh, yes. I’m sorry.” Standing to her full height, Rhodonite wiped her hands---Ruby’s on her leggings, Pearl’s on her ruffle---and then fell into something between a curtsy and a bow. “I’m Rhodonite.”

“Are you a fusion?”

She nodded feebly. “I can, um, unfuse if you’d like---”

“No, no!” Right said, her voice clearer than ever. Her twin agreed---“We want you to be you.”

The twins laced their fingers together and leaned towards one another, shoulders touching. “You’re not afraid of us?”

“Well…” Considering her options, Rhodonite eventually settled on the truth. They were equals, after all, no matter how low. “Yes. I am.”

She finally broached the ground between them and gently touched their tear-stained cheeks. “But if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that fear is an emotion… but courage is a decision.”

They leaned into her palms, and for the first time in what felt like eons, Rhodonite felt hope bloom in her gut.

"Thank you," the murmured in unison. It was as creepy as it was charming, and Rhodonite giggled despite herself.

“It's lovely to meet you, Twins. And it’s my honour to say… Welcome to the Off-Colours.”

**Author's Note:**

> This actually started as a picture ([This one](http://susiebeeca.tumblr.com/post/180530141073/dont-worry-youre-safe-now)), and ended up with me wondering about their pasts. Padparadscha's "infection" is dealt with in more depth in the story [Just In Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11646654), in case you were curious. 
> 
> See if you can spot the Winston Churchill quote!
> 
> And as always, thanks for reading :)


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